No More Scores: Quench stops using the 100 point scale

There’s a lot of people bad mouthing the 100-point wine tastings scale. Developed by Robert Parker decades ago, he used it to help illustrate his point of view. A punctuation to the tasting note he had written.
There’s nothing wrong with that, especially if you are a wine writer with personal experience of the wine world — which Parker and many of our writers have. The problem is how it’s made its way into our wine psyche.
In an average issue’s buying guide, we have over 14 tasters. Each of our seasoned writers has spent countless hours at the glass honing their palate — sounds like an awful job, I know. They are writers who can paint a picture of what to expect from a bottle in under 50 words. They are very skilled at being concise and illuminating.

But each writer is an individual, with clear experiences and viewpoints. No two are the same. How can we use a universal scoring system to categorize our buying guide? One person’s 90 is another’s 80. Scores get disjointed in the mass of our tasting notes.
It would be fine if we only had one taster. That’s why Parker made it work so well. But we are an amalgam of writers sitting around one table.
So why am I writing this? Starting in our February/March 2018 issue, we will be reimagining our buying guide. The scores will be gone but the rest is yet to be redrawn. We’d like your input in how to make it better. Email [email protected] and let us know how The Notes should look, post scores.

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Aldo Parise is the editor-in-chief of Quench. After running 4 magazines, including Riot and men's magazine Under Pressure, he's settled nicely into the his role as top drinker and food yummer guy. You can see him in the pages of Quench, Food and Drink Magazine.